Preparing Responsible Leaders of Tomorrow: The Case of a Motivational Training Camp in an Emerging Market Setting

Proceedings of The 4th International Conference on Applied Research in Education

Year: 2022

DOI:

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Preparing Responsible Leaders of Tomorrow: The Case of a Motivational Training Camp in an Emerging Market Setting

Prof. Dr. Virginia Bodolica

ABSTRACT: 

The young generation represents the biggest driving force behind the growth and development of any nation. The youth should be filled with ambitions to acquire the needed skills to be effective on the job, striving to bring out the best in themselves to become more accomplished citizens of tomorrow. The role of educational institutions, but also other entities from the public and private sectors, is to energize and support the youth by providing them with opportunities to discover, exercise, and take advantage of their talent. A country’s sustainability lies in its ability to motivate the youth to develop an understanding of self and others, find their purpose in life, and encourage them to make a difference for the benefit of future generations. For a wealthy nation such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), it is critical to ensure that its youth is highly motivated to learn and apply the competences that are required for sustaining the country’s current pace of growth and innovation.

In this article, we discuss the foundations of an ongoing initiative to conceptualize a Motivation Training Camp for young Emirati nationals – a comprehensive instructional and experiential program that seeks to assist them on their road toward self-discovery and contribution-oriented mentality. The camp seeks to educate in the local youth a sense of responsible behavior via a set of motivation-enhancing principles to support them in transitioning from an entitlement-based stance toward a philosophy of self-discipline, commitment, and care for others. We draw on theories of learning and motivation, and triple- and quadruple-helix models used in the field of education to design a program that focuses on the development of several groups of competences through the deployment of various teaching methodologies that aim to facilitate the development of these competences. Several implications for practice across the individual, group, institutional, and societal levels are discussed in the concluding section of the article.

keywords: triple-/quadruple-helix, youth and future leaders, group of competences, instructional methods, UAE.